Publisher's Description

LaunchBar is an award winning productivity utility that offers an amazingly intuitive and efficient way to search and access any kind of information stored on your computer or on the web. It provides instant access to your applications, documents, contacts and bookmarks, to your music library, to search engines and more, just by entering short abbreviations of the searched item's name.

You just hit Command-Space to bring LaunchBar's input window to front, enter an arbitrary abbreviation, and as soon as you start typing LaunchBar displays the best matching choices, ready to be opened immediately.

Start applications, open documents, invoke system services, compose emails or navigate the web - LaunchBar will be your essential servant.

What's new in this version:

New Clipboard History default action: Paste as Plain Text.

The Clipboard History action "Copy and Paste" has been changed to "Paste", so the current clipboard contents are no longer altered when pasting a clipboard history item.

Added "Send to" support for Clipboard History items (by pressing the Tab key).

Reduced memory footprint of Clipboard History.

The Clipboard preferences help button now opens the correct help page.

It is great. Spend time with it in your 30 day trial. It can seem complicated at first but it is the smoothest "do anything you want with a few key stokes" app ever. I love being able to move files around in the back with just a few strokes (no more dragging).

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.When I use other Macs I am lost without this software.

LaunchBar can do what other launchers do but the other stuff is just amazing. I haven't used spotlight directly in nearly two years (which is a blessing) and the ability to jump between locations, folders, programs and projects easily without having to think cannot be replicated easily using another launcher as far as I know.

Difficult to configure sometimes for those apps or docs that the program does not automatically jump to with its own very base AI.

Summary

Great addition to the finder. Gets you to the program or document that you want very quickly. If you're a touch typist, or if you prefer to use your keyboard to get where you're going, Launchbar is a must-have app.

This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.Not sure where the previous reviewer is coming from but in my experience, with well over 100,000 documents on my drive, Spotlight is virtually useless. Being able to locate key folders and documents almost instantly, without having to scroll through endless lists is just "expected behaviour" from this fantastic application. Now, with all the other add-ons - access to the Services menu in particular - makes this the very first application I install during a clean system install.

E-mail This Review

Thank You, !

Report Offensive Content

If you believe this comment is offensive or violates the CNET's Site Terms of Use, you can report it below (this will not automatically remove the comment). Once reported, our staff will be notified and the comment will be reviewed.

Thank You for Helping us Maintain CNET's Great Community, !

Full Specifications

The Clipboard History action "Copy and Paste" has been changed to "Paste", so the current clipboard contents are no longer altered when pasting a clipboard history item.

Added "Send to" support for Clipboard History items (by pressing the Tab key).

Reduced memory footprint of Clipboard History.

The Clipboard preferences help button now opens the correct help page.

Creating iCal events: Several bug fixes and improvements when entering time and date:

The hour/minute separator (colon or dot) can now be omitted in non-ambiguous cases (e.g. Fri 0800-1030). However, it's still necessary to enter the separator in ambiguous cases (Jan 13, 2010 vs. Jan 13, 20:10)

Fixed an issue when entering time ranges across noon or midnight (e.g. 10-12.30pm)

Fixed an issue causing LaunchBar not to hide when started automatically at login.

Fixed an issue with Instant Send / Get Finder Selection (Command-G) when there was nothing selected in Finder.

The shortcut for "Run in Background" / "Execute in Background" has been changed from Shift-Return to Option-Return to resolve a conflict with the new "Apply last entered text to selected item" feature, which also uses the Shift-Return shortcut.

The "Check Spelling While Typing" setting of LaunchBar's input window is now preserved across restarts.

The ClipMerge sound effect can now be customized by providing one or more sound files in the ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Sounds/ClipMerge folder. If this folder contains more than one sound file, the sound effect will be chosen randomly.